Internet News for Lee Iacocca

Lee Iacocca (born October 15, 1924 in Allentown, Pennsylvania) is an American industrialist. Among the most widely recognized businessmen in the world, Iacocca is the former chairman of Chrysler Corporation and was a passionate advocate of U.S. business exports during the 1980s.

Iacocca was involved with the design of several successful Ford automobiles, most notably the Ford Mustang; he was also the "moving force," as one court put it, behind the notorious Ford Pinto. He promoted other ideas which did not reach the marketplace as Ford products.

Eventually, he became the president of the Ford Motor Company, but he clashed with Henry Ford II and ultimately, in 1978, was forced to leave the company.

After leaving Ford, Lee was aggressively courted by the Chrysler corporation, which was on the verge of going out of business.

Iacocca joined Chrysler and began rebuilding the entire company from the ground up, laying off many workers, selling Chrysler's loss-making European division to Peugeot, and bringing in many former associates from Ford.

In July 2005, Iacocca returned to the airwaves as Chrysler's pitchman, along with stars such as Jason Alexander and Snoop Dogg, to promote Chrysler's Employee Pricing Plus program; the ads reprise the "If you can find a better car, buy it" line that was Iacocca's trademark in the 1980s. Other ads featured Iacocca with his granddaughter and with hip-hop star Snoop Dogg.

In return for his services, Iacocca and DaimlerChrysler agreed that his fees, plus a $1 donation per vehicle sold from July 1 through December 31, 2005, would be donated to the Iacocca Foundation for diabetes research.

Following the death of Iacocca's wife from diabetes, he has become an active supporter of research to find a cure for the disease, and has been one of the main patrons of the innovative diabetes research of Denise Faustman at Massachusetts General Hospital.

In 2000, Iacocca founded Olivio Premium Products, which manufactures the Olivio line of food products made from olive oil. He claims to donate all profit from the company to diabetes research.

In 2004, Iacocca launched Join Lee Now, a national grassroots campaign that will bring Faustman's research to human clinical trials in 2006. In mice, Faustman permanently reversed and cured Type 1 diabetes without toxic drugs or islet transplants. The grassroots campaign is modeled after Iacocca's enormously successful Statue of Liberty effort.

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